Former President Donald Trump's cryptocurrency project, World Liberty Financial, launched its token sale on Tuesday – and shortly after, its website crashed.
The whitelist for the much-hyped but still largely unclear decentralized finance project opened to accredited investors and non-U.S. persons on September 30. According to CNBC, Zach Folkman, co-founder of World Liberty Financial, claimed on Monday that “well over 100,000 people” had signed up to purchase his token WLFI. At the time of publication, the website appeared to be back online.
However, according to blockchain data collected by Etherscan, as of Tuesday afternoon there were only 5,317 unique wallet addresses in possession of the token, and World Liberty Financial said it had sold more than 532 million of the 20 billion tokens made available for public sale.
Sandy Peng, a WLFI consultant, said CoinDesk that the outages were due to excessive traffic. “The team did not expect such interest,” Peng said, adding that the site received 72 million unique visits in the first hour after the token was launched.
CoinDesk reports that the WLFI token, which is non-transferable for now, will be used to govern the World Liberty Financial platform. Owners have a say in protocol updates, technical changes, advertising partnerships, and security risk monitoring. Through the platform itself, users can borrow and lend cryptocurrencies.
Although Trump and his associates tout World Liberty Financial as a tool to help the unbanked and underbanked, only those who meet Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accredited investor requirements can purchase WLFI. To qualify as an accredited investor, an individual must have an income of at least $200,000 (or $300,000 with a spouse) and/or a net worth of at least $1 million, excluding their primary residence.
World Liberty Financial released a so-called “gold paper” on Tuesday about the token, listing Trump as its “chief crypto partner.” His three sons – Eric, Donald Trump Jr. and Barron – are listed as Web3 ambassadors.
According to the paper, the World Liberty Financial Protocol plans to “provide users with information and access to third-party DeFi applications, including third-party digital wallet providers for acquiring, holding and transferring stable coins and non-secure digital assets.” Specifically, the paper says , that the tokens “ARE NOT AVAILABLE TO U.S. PERSONS” and “have NOT BEEN REGISTERED WITH ANY U.S. OR OTHER AUTHORITY.”